Multistage Portfolio Optimization: A Duality Result in Conic Market Models

We prove a general duality result for multi-stage portfolio optimization problems in markets with proportional transaction costs. The financial market is described by Kabanov's model of foreign exchange markets over a finite probability space and finite-horizon discrete time steps. This framework allows us to compare vector-valued portfolios under a partial ordering, so that our model does not require liquidation into some numeraire at terminal time. We embed the vector-valued portfolio problem into the set-optimization framework, and generate a problem dual to portfolio optimization. Using recent results in the development of set optimization, we then show that a strong duality relationship holds between the problems

The Canopy

Khoa Le’s The Canopy is a mixed-use project located in the proposed East Village downtown. The project is actually four buildings: three of them have apartments sitting atop a commercial base of shops and cafés; the fourth is a one-story farmer’s market. The buildings form an intimate network of pedestrian alleyways and a small plaza, all covered by an airy roof structure, the canopy, which allows for public events and an expanded farmer’s market in the public realm – rain or shine

A Direct Simple Shear Device for the Dynamic Characterization of Partially Saturated Soils

The importance of unsaturated soil mechanics has become of interest in recent decades to the geotechnical community. Previous investigations have led to the conclusion that inter-particle interactions present in unsaturated soils can contribute additional strength to the soil structure. Recent renovations made to a custom built Direct Simple Shear Apparatus at the University of New Hampshire has allowed researchers to study the dynamic properties of partially saturated soils. The renovations included a new control system, hydraulic components, and data acquisition system to allow the system to become functional from its previous working state. Modifications made to the soil chamber and the installation of a flow pump allows users to use the axis translation technique to control the degree of saturation in the soil specimens. An investigation conducted on a clean sand subjected to medium shear strains were tested at different degrees of saturation from a completely dry to a saturated state. The investigation confirmed the importance of matric suction on both the seismic compression and dynamic properties, as well as the validation of the system to record these properties. Results indicated that higher shear modulus values and lower damping ratios were observed for specimens subjected to larger matric suction values. Further investigations will be needed to address some of the challenges encountered in the system

Supervised Hashing with End-to-End Binary Deep Neural Network

Image hashing is a popular technique applied to large scale content-based visual retrieval due to its compact and efficient binary codes. Our work proposes a new end-to-end deep network architecture for supervised hashing which directly learns binary codes from input images and maintains good properties over binary codes such as similarity preservation, independence, and balancing. Furthermore, we also propose a new learning scheme that can cope with the binary constrained loss function. The proposed algorithm not only is scalable for learning over large-scale datasets but also outperforms state-of-the-art supervised hashing methods, which are illustrated throughout extensive experiments from various image retrieval benchmarks.Comment: Accepted to IEEE ICIP 201

Lake Anne Village: Planning Precedent

Lake Anne Village Center, Reston, Virginia (1963-67): Located in rolling terrain outside Washington D.C., Reston was intended to provide a new model of suburban development in post-World War II America. The town as a whole is composed of several discreet communities, all separated by abundant open spaces. Lake Anne Village is the best known of these, primarily due to its center, a mixed-use development of townhouses, apartments, and shops, whose modestly scaled Brutalist buildings are artfully arranged around Washington Plaza, a superb public space overlooking the eponymous lake. James Rossant was the architect/planner. The purpose of looking at this precedent was to consider which elements go into making successful public spaces